


Getting to Atlantis

by neensz



Series: Epic X-over [2]
Category: Leverage, Psych, Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Cameo, Explicit Language, Gen, Kid Fic, M/M, Past deaths of loved ones, Surprise Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-24
Updated: 2013-12-13
Packaged: 2018-01-04 12:51:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 10,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1081229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neensz/pseuds/neensz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eliot said no to the SGC and Atlantis; he chose Shawn when he didn't think he could have adventures in space and still keep his man. Six months later, the universe changed his mind for him.</p><p>(The original first five chapters of Square Peg, edited, revamped and renovated into a self-contained short story.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

\--ELIOT--

It’d been six months since the United States government offered Eliot Spencer a job dealing with aliens, traveling to new worlds and protecting planet Earth. Six months ago they’d given him two weeks paid leave to consider their offer.

Five and a half months ago, Eliot said no.

Instead, he took the full pardon and early retirement the government offered him as payment for services rendered, or, as General O’Neill put it, because they don’t make a ‘sorry we let an evil alien snake take over your brain’ greeting card.

It had been an amazing opportunity, but Eliot didn’t regret saying no. Shawn was worth it.

Within two hours of Eliot’s arrival in SoCal a certain hacker found out, and the work found him.

Nate started calling him a ‘satellite office’ and sent him local jobs. Some of the local jobs he passed to Psych, and a couple of them he backed up Shawn and Gus on. Those jobs were… interesting. In the batshit insane sense of the word.

For all it had a murder almost every week, Santa Barbara was a relatively quiet and crime-free city. Catching the little fish and making them reconsider their chosen careers with a judicious application of fists just wasn’t the same as the work he’d done with the team.

Hell, his work was almost entirely above board nowadays. He’d even rescued a fucking kitten last week.

There were long dry spells between the jobs Nate sent his way, but it wasn’t like he had to work, after all. He’d made it big with the team on that first job, and everything since that had just added to the pretty sizeable nest egg sitting pretty in a couple different offshore accounts. And then there was the not-inconsiderable chunk of change the government had given him as back pay and pension.

But Eliot was quick to get antsy and bored doing nothing. He felt goddamned useless. Fishing, hiking, camping, restoring the old Indian he’d got his hands on, and working on the fixer-upper in the suburbs he’d bought, all took up only so much time.

That first night Eliot arrived back in Santa Barbara, Shawn asked him to move in.

Eliot even managed to say no without accidentally breaking up with Shawn.

It wasn’t that it was too big of a commitment for him. It wasn’t because he was worried what people would think, seeing as how Eliot didn’t give a flying fuck what other people thought unless he was running a con.

Frankly, Eliot had seen Shawn’s apartment/dry cleaner’s outlet. The place was a security nightmare. But the real reason was because Shawn was the King of the Slobs. The man collected clutter like it was going out of style.

Eliot didn’t spend any more time in Shawn’s apartment than he could help.

He tabled the discussion for good by buying a drafty old Victorian as fast as Hardison could push the paperwork through under Spencer Chappell’s name. It had shitty wiring, wall-to-wall green shag and a leaky roof. Fixing it up at least ate up some of his endless days.

Besides, he figured he could rent it out or sell it for a little extra if he ever needed to clear out of Santa Barbara, and it was good detail for the Chappell alias.

When he needed a change from fixing up the house and didn’t have any jobs lined up (and there weren’t that many), there was always the rusted-out Indian in the garage to work on.

Eliot didn’t regret telling O‘Neill no. But he missed the adrenaline rush.

So he found new ways to get that rush. But extreme sports fell far short of what he was used to.

So he introduced himself to Detective Lassiter with his real name, in the middle of the police station. Maybe it wasn’t his smartest idea, but Eliot was losing it, stuck in criminal equivalent of suburbia.

Shawn’s big, scared eyes reminded Eliot of those Japanese comics Hardison always read on stakeouts.

It was the first time he felt really alive since he’d ‘settled down,’ as Sophie called it.

It was a month after he’d turned down the General. A month and a half since his criminal record had been purged so completely even Hardison couldn’t find any evidence it had ever existed, and a still-classified, but sanitized (read: completely fictional) military record uploaded to the DoD servers.

Part of the reason he’d walked up to Head Detective Lassiter and introduced himself with a firm handshake was because he wanted to check if the General had come through for him. Part of the reason was that he was looking for a rush, and the slim chance that he would have to fight his way out of the cop shop was a big selling point.

But a big part of it was because Lassiter irritated the crap out of him. It was obvious how much of the station’s solve rate Lassiter owed Shawn. But Lassiter treated Shawn like he was worth less than the gum stuck to the bottom of Lassiter’s shoe.

To add insult to injury, Eliot still caught Shawn giving the bastard his puppydog eyes every once in a while, even though Shawn denied it and assured him that his ‘thing for Lassyface’ was over and done.

So, one day Eliot tagged along on Shawn’s daily visit to the station.

First, he followed Shawn until Shawn found O’Hara, because he didn’t like the way she tended to look at Shawn when they worked a case together. She always eyed him like he was the candy she desperately wanted but couldn’t have because it wasn’t allowed in her ridiculous South Beach meal plan, but she was beginning to seriously consider cheating on her diet to have just a little taste of it, because one little nibble couldn't hurt.

When Shawn bounced to a stop in front of O’Hara, Eliot pulled Shawn close for a lingering kiss full of soft lips and sharp teeth that left Shawn panting and Detective O’Hara blushing. Eliot smirked at O’Hara, gave Shawn one last chaste peck, and strode across the stunned silent bullpen to Lassiter’s desk. Lassiter was turning purple, and looked like he was about to have an apoplexy.

Eliot spared a distant thought for how Shawn’s father was taking it, but decided in a split second that whatever Henry’s reaction, Shawn would get a kick out of it.

“I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced,” Eliot couldn’t keep his eyes from crinkling with humor, but held out his hand for Lassiter to shake. Surprised into courtesy, Lassiter stood up and took his hand.

“Corporal Eliot Spencer, retired,” he said evenly, and shook Lassiter’s hand firmly, letting his grin spread across his face. “I heard you were looking for me.”

Eliot didn’t resist as Lassiter shoved him flat across the desk and slapped a pair of handcuffs on him almost as quickly as Eliot could have done. Lassiter bellowed for an officer to book him before telling Eliot he was under arrest and starting in on his Miranda rights.

“Excuse me,” Eliot interrupted, grinning as Lassiter paused for breath. It’d probably be quicker another way, but God, being polite was going to be so much more entertaining. “Can you tell me what exactly I’m under arrest for?”

Shawn made a strangled sound Eliot could hear clearly from all the way across the bullpen, but Eliot didn’t turn to look at him. If Shawn was laughing, he’d set Eliot off. And if he wasn’t Eliot would rather pretend he was for now, and deal with the fallout when there wasn’t a bullpen of cops looking on.

Lassiter glowered at Eliot, clearly choosing to ignore Shawn’s very existence. “For multiple outstanding warrants, the details of which I’ll have Officer McNab read you after I finish Mirandizing you,” Lassiter answered slowly, like he thought Eliot had either lost it or just been stupid to begin with.

“Oh, I’d rather you make sure you’ve got those multiple outstanding warrants before you finish arresting me, if’n y'all don’t mind,” Eliot replied slowly and politely in his heaviest Southern drawl, smiling brightly.

Shawn made another strangled sound. Eliot ignored it and turned up the wattage on the smile he was aiming at Lassiter.

Lassiter’s loud, sputtered explanation to the Chief while she apologized to Eliot for the misunderstanding filled him with a vindictive glee until he was practically vibrating with it, even though he didn’t let any of it slip out. Just for a second, it was like he was still with the team and some ridiculously complicated plan had gone exactly how it was supposed to.

Just for a second, he was back.

And then reality crashed down on him and he was gone; he was Almost-Respectable Eliot again.

Eliot didn’t really regret telling O’Neill no. But sometimes he dreamed that he’d said yes.

He figured it was a bad sign when his first thought on seeing John’s email in his secure inbox was a hopeful ‘maybe he needs some Earth-based backup.’

****

\--JOHN--

John Sheppard eyed the ground from the top of the stack of bales on the flatbed. He figured they could probably lay up another row and still be safe to drive, as long as the boys on the ground were careful buckin’.

He caught sight of one of his conscripts out of the corner of his eye and regretted again ever asking Eliot for help, since he came with a city boy attached at the hip. No one else had ignored his warnings about the sun, the hay, or how torn up they’d be at the end of the day.

Eliot had sense and was wearing flannel, work gloves, old jeans and a beat-up ball cap hat, like the rest of them. Well, the rest of them except McKay, and McKay in a Stetson was something else.

Shawn, however, was probably already out at least a couple hundred for the jeans alone, judging by the tears in the knees, never mind the expensive manicure he’d been sporting the last time John had seen him. But at least he was working hard, if inefficiently, and without complaint even though his hands had to be blistering like nobody’s business without work gloves to cushion the rasp and tear of the cheap twine on city-soft skin.

Because John was looking right at him, he saw the exact moment when the shit hit the fan. Shawn let go of the bale he was swinging up at just the wrong moment—probably a burst blister, because John knew that expression well. John watched the bale head for the middle of the carefully stacked bales he was standing on like it was happening in slow motion.

He could see it happening, but it was too quick for him to stop what he knew was coming next.

The rogue bale hit the side of the stacked hay on the flatbed and sent the top three rows—and the two people standing on them—off the other side of the truck to the hard-packed dirt twenty feet below.

John and McKay were flung clear of the toppling bales, but John broke McKay’s fall. John’s stomach muscles spasmed and he gasped uselessly for air as McKay rolled off him. He struggled to fight down the panic that always filled him every time he got the air knocked out of him.

“Jesus, McKay,” John said, once he’d finally regained control of his diaphragm.

McKay wasn’t exactly a light load, and he’d landed right on top of him. McKay glared at him and muttered something John didn’t catch. “What?”

“I said, I used to be Rodney. What’s with all this McKay shit again? Are you going to make me relive that whole first year before we’re good again?” he snapped at John, avoiding meeting John’s eyes by twisting awkwardly to try and pull stray pieces of hay from the back of his collar.

“Whoa, buddy! Calm down. What’re you talking about?” John never really understood how McKay’s head worked, but now he was even more lost than usual.

McKay was silent long enough that John was tricked into thinking McKay was just going to drop the subject, and started looking around for his hat. So he was surprised by McKay asking quietly, “Are we even friends anymore? I mean, really? Because, well, you’ve been back almost a year, but you’re not the same. You were gone for five years, and it’s not like we kept in touch. We wouldn’t be here, you wouldn’t be back and hanging around me, any of us, again if O’Neill hadn’t pulled you out of early retirement last year to sit your ass in the chair.”

John tried to protest, but McKay waved him quiet. He kept talking, emphasizing his points with his hands in a way John knew by heart. What the hell did McKay mean, saying they weren’t really friends? Sure, John wasn’t really the letter-writing type, but it wasn’t like McKay was the letter-reading type.

He tuned back in to hear McKay say, “We didn’t talk for five years, John. Let’s just stop pretending we were ever more than just awkward work friends, okay?” He paused, then got quiet enough that John wasn’t sure he was supposed to hear, “Stop trying to fit the fucking square peg in the round goddamn hole and accept it, McKay.”

The hopelessness in McKay’s voice made something behind his ribs clench painfully. Five years hadn’t seemed as long on his side of the equation as it must have to McKay. But then again, Pegasus was like that.

“You done?” John asked after the tense silence had stretched out awkwardly, pushing down his irritation. McKay wouldn’t look at him, but he didn’t say anything either.

“Jesus, Rodney,” he whined, stretching McKay’s name into almost three syllables, the way he knew McKay hated best. “You’re my best friend. Do we have to have a sleepover and braid each other’s hair before you’ll believe it? ‘Cause there’s no way in hell I’m gonna start writing you letters about my feelings.”

McKay spluttered wordlessly and John smirked. Hopefully things would go back to normal, because if McKay wanted him to start talking about his feelings, there was going to be hitting. And not just because John couldn’t even articulate them to himself.

****

\--ELIOT--

When there weren’t any cries of pain after John and McKay hit the ground on the other side of the flatbed, Eliot relaxed and laughed.

He stifled his laughter when he noticed Shawn staring in horror at the destruction of half their work. He looked frustrated enough to scream. Even though Eliot knew Shawn had just added another three hours to their workday, he couldn’t keep himself from grabbing the back of Shawn’s sunburnt neck and pulling him in tight against his chest in a one-armed hug. “It’s just hay, man. It’s not the end of the world,” Eliot told him quietly.

It was always hard to remember until they were right next to each other that Shawn was actually an inch or two taller than him. But then, that was Shawn. He always managed to make himself seem insignificant until he wanted everyone to look at him; it was like his charisma had an on/off switch. And it was probably the reason Shawn’s arrest record didn’t take up an entire police server on its own.

Shawn groaned and slipped out from under Eliot’s arm, trudging over to kick one of the toppled bales of hay spitefully. He shoved it aside and started trying to salvage as much of the unsteady tower on the flatbed as he could.

“You gonna help or just watch?” Shawn asked Eliot over his shoulder, wrestling a bale trying its damnedest to overbalance and take more of the stack with it. Most of the time, Shawn was the laziest person Eliot knew. But other times, like now, he’d keep working till the job was done or until someone dragged him away.

Eliot smirked and crossed his arms. “Just watch,” he said, and admired the view. Shawn’s designer jeans and tight T-shirt were impractical for the work, but damn if he didn’t make them look good. He started feeling guilty after a few minutes and stepped in to help Shawn straighten up the mess.

Since it didn’t look like Shawn was going to stop till his mess was cleaned up, it was the least he could do, seeing how everyone else had taken the falling bales as a sign from above that it was time for a break. John had headed up the hill to the house to greet the newcomer making himself at home on the porch with a beer and a lawn chair, and McKay had been towed off by the hand around to the far side of the barn by an insistent five year old who wanted input on his latest construction project.


	2. Chapter 2

\--JOHN--

“Jack, there is no way in hell I’m leaving my son behind in the Milky Way after the Trust threatened him.” John glared down his superior officer. “I’ll fucking resign before-”

“I get that, John, I do, I-” O’Neill interrupted him, without a trace of humor, his voice catching. The expression that flashed across his face reminded John that O’Neill knew exactly how hard losing a son could be. “I’m not saying you should,” which wasn’t, actually, the impression John had got earlier at all. But he wasn’t going to question the change of tune, not when he felt like such an asshole for reminding O’Neill of Charlie.

“Just give me a few months before you pull out the big guns. I’m not gonna take Atlantis away from you, but if the IOA gets it in their heads that the only way they’ll get your ass back in Atlantis’s chair is if Jesse goes with you, I don’t think I’ll disabuse them of that notion.” Jack took a long pull on his beer.

Jack put the bottle down and leaned forward in his chair, clasping his hands and not quite meeting John’s eyes. John froze, because that was Jack for ‘now here’s the bad news.’ “You need to be careful,” Jack said quietly. “If certain people think they can control you through Jesse, certain people might try to get you declared unfit for parenting and take him away.”

John surged forward, but Jack shoved him back into his chair with a sharp ‘shut up and listen’ gesture. “I actually think the both of you would be safer in Pegasus. Fuck, who would’ve thought the space vampires would be more fucking human than our own bureaucrats?” Jack asked rhetorically. “So, I figure the best plan is to have Atlantis ship out a little early. Jesse’s beneath the notice of pretty much everyone right now, seeing as how he’s still too young to be useful yet, but if Atlantis has a stowaway it’ll be too costly to recall her for one kid. With any luck, they’ll forget about him entirely if you’re out there long enough. It’s not like he’ll miss out on the public school system,” he said, glancing wryly at the barn, where Jesse and McKay were industriously working on building something—something that was beginning to look suspiciously like a miniature (hopefully unpowered) puddle jumper.

John huffed out a breath. That was true enough. Jesse could already read, and now that he was talking in complete sentences and could grasp abstract concepts, McKay had deemed him worthy of attention. Lately, John was just as likely to catch Jesse watching “NOVA” and “How It’s Made” as “Dora the Explorer.” Never mind the reading list John’d caught McKay giving him. Euclid’s Elements? John hadn’t cracked that doorstop until he was getting his master’s degree.

If his kid passed him up in mathematics before even hitting puberty, John was going to need some alone time with a bottle of Johnny’s best to get used to the idea. He didn’t want Jesse to be dumb, but he’d always thought he’d have more time before his kid no longer thought he was the smartest guy in the universe.

Jack continued, “Frankly, I’d rather do that than try and blackmail the IOA into letting you take him—with no paperwork, they’ll have no clue where he is and will waste at least a few months looking for him here on Earth once they realize he’d be useful to them.”

John almost collapsed in relief. His skin was still tingling from the rush of adrenalin at the implied threat to Jesse. Jack was on board; Jesse was going. No buts about it.

O’Neill relaxed back in his chair and smirked at John. A shout from over by the flatbed caught both soldiers’ attention briefly before they automatically classified it as ‘not a threat.’

When O’Neill turned back to face John, he had a look in his eye that John recognized, having worn it himself a few times.

It was the same look he knew he’d worn when he’d begged Weir to let Teyla on his team—he shoved that memory down hard. Even though she’d been dead almost a decade now, Elizabeth Weir had been a good friend before the end, and he hadn’t had enough of those in his life for her death to not still hurt like it was the first day. He pushed away the grief; he’d had enough damned practice, with all the people he’d lost.

“Did the cool kid tell you he didn’t want to come out and play, Jack?” he mocked his CO, grinning.

“If I get a Ranger I’ll have the full set,” O’Neill grumbled under his breath.

John raised an eyebrow in feigned surprise. “I thought you didn’t have a SEAL yet, either.”

“SecNav recommended one. It’s all done but the paperwork, and Teal’c will have a new toy to break next time he needs a break from Chulak’s political clusterfuck,” O’Neill grinned, briefly as happy as a kid in a bookstore with no spending limit—well, as happy as John’s kid in a bookstore with no spending limit, anyway.

John shrugged. “I don’t know what to tell you, sir,” he waved off O’Neill’s glare at the formality, “except, he’s never gonna leave the planet—not when Shawn’s on it, anyway.”

It was just a throwaway comment. Harmless. Except, judging from the sudden glint in O’Neill’s eye, not so harmless after all. “He’s some sort of psychic, right?” O’Neill asked thoughtfully. Also apparently rhetorically, since he set down his beer and hopped off the deck without waiting for an answer, striding purposefully off towards the flatbed, the mountain of fallen hay bales, and the two men slowly working at putting the mess to rights.

A little alarmed and a lot not wanting to miss the show sure to come, John followed. 


	3. Chapter 3

\--ELIOT--

Shawn broke off in the middle of the litany he was muttering under his breath, too quiet for Eliot to really make out, to say in a strange tone, “El, there’s an old dude running at us with a weird look on his face.”

Eliot jerked his head up to stare in the direction Shawn was pointing. The tension that had immediately filled him in his fight-or-fight moment (because fleeing was never an option when he had someone to protect) eased slightly. John was on the six of a stranger who looked vaguely familiar, and there was no way he’d classify that brisk walk as running. He couldn’t see well enough in the dusk to make out the expression on the stranger’s face, and started to wonder just how good Shawn’s eyesight really was.

Then the stranger was close enough to recognize, and Eliot relaxed. There wasn't any danger coming from that direction, at least not physically. Though he should have known the General wasn’t going to let him out of his clutches as easily as he had.

The General surprised Eliot by addressing Shawn first. “So I hear you’re a psychic."

General O'Neill eyed Shawn in a way Eliot wasn’t entirely comfortable with. It definitely wasn’t the way most people looked at Shawn, which was either a) with lust, b) with disdainful cynicism, or c) complete and utter fanatic belief. O’Neill looked at Shawn like, well, like Shawn was an alien O'Neill wanted as an ally. Which might actually be business as usual to him, Eliot had to admit.

“Uh,” Shawn floundered briefly, clearly confused. “Sure,” he agreed after a moment. “Why?” he added another second later.

Eliot rolled his eyes. With a ringing endorsement like that, it was a wonder people ever hired him.

The conversation was interrupted before O'Neill had a chance to answer. Jesse’s decibel-shattering shriek of anger-fear-pain easily made its way around the barn, and almost drowned out the shout of a lower-pitched, adult voice.

John took off around the barn, headed for where Jesse and Doctor McKay had been working on Jesse’s project. The other three men followed close on his heels.

Eliot shoved Shawn behind him as soon as he saw the situation they were running into. A tall, skinny guy in a cheap suit was yelling and holding a weapon Eliot didn’t recognize, which meant it was probably extraterrestrial in origin. The man was aiming his alien gun at Jesse, and McKay was laying motionless on the ground with a .38 S&W Chef’s Special spilling out of his lax hand. With the part of his brain not calculating angles and tactics Eliot chided himself for not noticing earlier that the scientist had been strapped; he was getting careless in his semi-retirement. Jesse was screaming wordlessly at the guy and edging towards McKay’s gun.

In other words, it was a clusterfuck.

The guy yelled something else and disappeared in a flash of light—something Eliot was getting used to, if against his will—but not before he fired off one last shot.

John and O’Neill were outside Eliot’s peripheral vision, so the gunshot that rang out before the light completely engulfed the man could have come from either of them. Whoever fired got the man in the cheap suit in the shoulder of the hand holding the weapon, and the blob of blue light from the alien gun cleared Jesse's head and hummed over Eliot’s shoulder faster than Eliot could react.

Eliot swore, loudly and extensively, at the soft thump that followed. He turned to find Shawn collapsed on the ground. Eliot was kneeling at Shawn’s side and feeling for a pulse with trembling fingers in less than a second.

The steady throb of Shawn’s heartbeat under his fingers left his knees weak, and he was, against his will, hysterically amused that Shawn had somehow managed to get knocked out by yet another alien weapon. Eliot wondered half-heartedly if every sentient species had managed to reinvent the taser, and exactly how many iterations of it Shawn was going to experience personally.

As soon as he reassured himself that Shawn was alive and unharmed, if unconscious, the rest of the world made itself known again. “Goddammit, Jack, I thought you said the IOA didn’t know about him yet?” John growled, Jesse pressed close to his side with one arm. his other hand was checking McKay's pulse as obsessively as Eliot had checked Shawn's—was still checking, as he noticed Shawn's heartbeat still thrumming reassuringly under his fingers. “And how the hell did they get a Wraith stunner?”

O’Neill rapped out sharp commands into his cell phone, but covered the mic long enough to answer John. “The IOA doesn’t know about him—I recognize that bastard from my last meeting with the NID,” O’Neill spat. “I thought we’d flushed all the scum out of it, but apparently not. I’m ordering Atlantis’s ship-out date up to three days from today, and we’ll move you all to the Mountain until then for the increased security, and so we can put a rush on the medicals.” John nodded sharp agreement, his arm tightening around his shaking kid. O’Neill uncovered the mic on his cell and resumed barking orders into it.

Eliot raised his eyebrows at John. “All of us?” he asked, and scowled at John’s uncompromising nod.

“Shit, Spencer, what do you expect? The guy saw you. They’ve obviously got resources we don’t know about. Do you want them to come after you and him back in Santa Barbara? Because that’s what would happen. They tried to take Jesse from my own fucking home, while I was still here! They’ve got to have something up their sleeve.” John glared at Eliot, and added sharply, “I know you’re not a fucking idiot, so stop acting like one and start thinking. There’s no other option.”

Resigned, Eliot faced the facts. Their only other real option was to run, and keep running, and while Eliot might be able to stay one step ahead of the NID’s unknown resources, adding Shawn to the mix made the possibility of staying out of their grasp even slimmer. Shawn had never been on the run, not for real. Eliot knew Shawn would do his best—which was pretty damn good—but eventually he’d slip, or Eliot would, or someone would sell them out.

So it had to be Atlantis. Another fucking galaxy. Shit.

O’Neill stabbed the end button on his phone with extreme prejudice, and eyed Eliot.

Eliot grimaced. "Well, it’s half a year past your deadline, but I’m signing up for the program. I hope you’re happy,” Eliot growled at him, with more resignation than anger.

“Ecstatic,” O’Neill agreed drolly with a deadpan expression.

****

\--JOHN--

“How about it, kiddo?” John asked, hefting Jesse up onto his hip with a grunt. Either Jesse was getting heavier, or John was getting older. He preferred to believe it was the former. “Want to go visit Torren?”

“Tor!” Jesse squealed with hysterical glee, wiggling in John’s arms. John resigned himself to the nightmares that were sure to come in the coming weeks, but if Jesse wanted to pretend none of it had ever happened, he could follow his son's lead.

“Here or in ‘Lantis?” Jesse asked suspiciously.

“Actually, we’re gonna go visit him at his home this time,” John grinned at his son. Torren was the cousin slash older brother Jesse'd never had, who alternately tormented and doted on Jesse. In return, Jesse loved the older boy unreservedly. The two were usually joined at the hip as soon as Torren hit Earth. Jesse always wailed when they had to be separated, and would pout for days after Torren went back to Pegasus.

Jesse got the incandescent expression that made John’s heart ache; it made him look so much like his mother. However, it was the face she made when she caught an unanticipated bonus Hive ship in her blast radius, so seeing it on Jesse’s face was alway mildly unsettling as well.

“We’re going to Pegasus? To Assos?” Jesse clarified, eyeing John like he knew it was too good to be true but couldn’t help hoping anyway.

“Yeah, buddy. We’re going to Pegasus, and you can visit Tor on Athos,” John grinned down into Jesse’s face. (Well, technically it was New New New Athos, but that had lasted all of a day before everyone was just calling it Athos again.)

Jesse flung his arms around John’s neck and hugged him so hard that he had trouble breathing—not just because Jesse was constricting his airway.

John was pretty sure the bubble of joy that filled him at making Jesse happy—a welcome relief from the darker things that filled his soul and his nightmares—was proof that he was completely wrapped around his kid’s little finger. And he didn’t give a flying fuck about it, because that was where parents were meant to be.

Half a day later, John was lurking in the SGC's infirmary when Shawn groaned his way into consciousness. Keller chirped cheerfully at Shawn, completely ignoring McKay’s groans in the bed on her other side.

Well, that explained the transfer request he’d found in his inbox when they arrived at the Mountain a few hours ago. McKay hadn’t mentioned it, but then again, it’d been six years since that had all started, so maybe it’d been over for a while.

Except he hadn’t noticed anything while on Atlantis. On the one hand, McKay was a surprisingly private person. But John seriously doubted he would have missed this petty silent treatment she was giving him. In the infirmary, of all places.

John was glad she’d put in for the transfer to the SGC, because this childishness wasn't behavior suited to the CMO of Atlantis. It was one thing to avoid someone off duty, but if you had to talk to someone in the line of work, then you damned well would, and you’d like it, too—and leave the goddamn emotional baggage for the off hours.

It particularly annoyed him that it’d taken him this long to see this side of her. That sort of immaturity had no place in Pegasus. He wondered how long this had been happening under his nose—or that of the Commanding Officers (and there had been five) who’d held the position after he’d retired, for that matter—but at least it didn’t matter anymore. He’d pay closer attention to the next CMO, and he wouldn’t miss something like this again.

Keller’s chirping caught his attention, and he tuned in long enough to hear her exclaim, in perfect imitation of a ditzy cheerleader, “and ohmigod, the strength of your expression of the ATA gene is right up there with Colonel Sheppard’s, and his is even stronger than General O’Neill’s!”

John groaned. He wasn’t sure why, not exactly, but he was suddenly filled with the dread certainty that drafting the Spencer boys to Atlantis was going to make life very difficult for him.

****

—ELIOT—

Eliot caught his breath lying on the mat of the sparring circle, and didn’t bother to stand when the SEAL stooped to loom over him. “I guess you’re the last of O’Neill’s collectible action figures,” Eliot said snidely, without looking up. He wasn't feeling particularly charitable with his commanding officer after having been railroaded back into service; he wasn't feeling particularly charitable in regards to the whole fucking planet, for that matter. But that was fine, since he was leaving it tomorrow.

“Guess so,” the SEAL agreed calmly, and offered Eliot a hand up.

Eliot ignored the hand for a moment, but began to feel like a pouting child when the SEAL didn’t lower his hand. He took the looming SEAL’s hand with a sigh, and let the SEAL pull him back up to his feet. “Nice hook,” he admitted grudgingly, and the SEAL shrugged one massive shoulder in a dismissive gesture.

“What team?” Eliot asked a few hours later as they ran their cooldowns on adjacent machines of the fleet of souped-up treadmills The SGC hid in the basement. Not that everything wasn’t already hidden in the basement at Cheyenne Mountain.

“SG-22.”

Eliot gave him a quick once-over out of the corner of his eye, then stepped off his treadmill and offered his hand. “Corporal Spencer, AR-17.”

“Hanna.” The SEAL shook his hand.

“Welcome to the party, squid.” Though it came out sounding more like 'welcome to the asylum.'


	4. Chapter 4

\--JOHN--

Jesse was off terrorizing Carter and Jackson, who both had a huge soft spot for him and always volunteered for babysitting duty when John brought Jesse to the Mountain. John had been enjoying some quality adult time, sitting in the chair next to McKay’s bed in the infirmary with his feet propped up on McKay’s hospital bed, minding his own business—for a value of minding his own business that involved playing magnetic chess with McKay and/or provoking McKay into a rant on the substandard quality of the wet-behind-the-ears scientists the SGC was foisting off on the Pegasus galaxy—when Keller waltzed in and dropped a metaphorical bomb in his lap.

He tried to ignore Rodney’s muttered, “Oh my god, it is the hair,” in favor of trying to understand what Keller had just said. He’d heard the words just fine, but comprehending them, well, that was another matter.

“Can you repeat that?” John’s voice came out normal-sounding and mildly curious, which was surprising in and of itself. If there was anything he wasn’t feeling right now, it was normal. More like shell-shocked.

Keller huffed out a breath and put her hands on her hips, shooting him a mild glare. “I said, and if you would please pay attention this time, Colonel, that I discovered when doing Mr. Spencer’s required genetic workup in preparation for joining the SGC and being sent to Pegasus—well, I found roughly thirty percent of his alleles to be in common with yours, including the ones comprising the ATA genome. Because of this, there’s a high probability that he is, in fact, your half-brother, seeing as most half-siblings share approximately twenty-five percent of their alleles on average.”

McKay spluttered something about patient-doctor confidentiality, and Keller rolled her eyes at him with a fond but irritated “Rodney,” that John, desperately needing to focus on something other than his newfound knowledge, noted with chagrin. Obviously he’d jumped the gun with his snap-judgment of her earlier. Good thing he hadn’t made note of it in her file like he’d been tempted to.

“It’s something you’d have been made aware of as CSO anyway,” John explained flatly, his mind still churning at an uncountable number of revolutions per second, alternately trying to process the new information and trying to ignore it completely. “I’ll have to tell Woolsey, and the new CMO too. If his gene is as strong as mine, and he’s as good at getting into trouble as his background check suggests, and he’s going to be living in a city that he can control with his mind…” John trailed off and let McKay’s imagination do the work. He wasn’t disappointed.

“Oh, god, we’re gonna have to childproof the whole city. Twice,” McKay moaned in resignation. “He won’t even have the—admittedly lax—age-based limits she imposes on Jesse.”

Throughout all this, John had been watching Shawn from the corner of his eye. Shawn was silently opening and closing his mouth in a pretty good imitation of a fish, eyes wide and unblinking with the same shock John had been actively suppressing.

Shawn was only a bed away in the otherwise mostly-empty infirmary (though John was sure that would change with the next unscheduled activation). There was no way he could have missed the conversation. Especially considering Keller’s original statement had been directed at Shawn, before John had asked her to repeat herself.

“Wait, what?” Shawn finally asked. John wondered briefly—and hypocritically, considering his own reaction to the news—whether the IQ score reported in Shawn’s dossier was accurate. He certainly didn’t sound like a genius.

But then again, neither did John. Which was, hell, another thing they had in common. He really, really hoped Shawn wasn’t the type to want to do some sort of fraternal bonding thing over shared traits and crappy childhoods.

Because that? John could not handle.

He had a P-90 and he knew how to use it, goddammit, and brotherly bonding would happen over his cold, dead body.

Shawn interrupted John’s circling thoughts. “Seriously, Doctor Barbie, what the hell are you talking about? I can’t be his brother—there’s no way Henry would have put up with me if there wasn’t any genetic connection or biological imperative or whatever, and there’s no way in hell my mom would have stayed with him as long as she did if he was making her raise his illegitimate love-child as her own. So your tests must be wrong.”

Keller scowled blackly at Shawn. She was intense enough about it that John noticed Rodney actually trying to surreptitiously shrink away from the line of fire. If looks could kill, Keller would be a good weapon to use on the Wraith. But John wasn’t sure if it was the Doctor Barbie comment that provoked the death-glare, or if it was the implication that her tests could be wrong. On second thought, it was definitely the latter.

She’d hung out with too many Marines back on Atlantis for something as tame as Doctor Barbie to bother her after so many years of exposure.

****

\--SHAWN--

Shawn’s brain was reeling. Henry wasn’t his biological father? And the man raised him anyway? Actually, that might explain an awful lot, come to think of it. And it had to have been his mom who’d stepped out, considering the way Henry was still panting after her and trying to win her back after over twenty years of divorce. Maybe she hadn’t told him? But as much as he hated to admit it, Henry was smart, and he’d probably managed to figure it out on his own.

Especially since both his parents were blonde—or had been blond before going bald, anyway—which was a recessive trait, and Shawn had dark brown hair. And green-hazel eyes, when his mom’s eyes were blue and Henry’s were brown. It was hard to believe he’d never actually considered this before, what with the way he’d always wanted to get out from under Henry’s thumb when he was a kid.

“My mother never cheated on my father,” John was saying in a clipped tone, and Shawn nodded silently. That fit with what he’d just deduced about his own parents. If it was Shawn’s mother who’d cheated, it would make it John’s father who’d knocked her up.

Plus, with the way John had phrased it, it sounded like he was certain his dad had cheated on his mom. “And I first met my 5-year-old half-brother—not step brother—Dave, a year after my mother died. His mother was even my stepmother for a while before he cheated on her, too. It’s definitely plausible.” So, yeah, John had known since he was a kid that his dad had cheated on his mom. That had to have sucked.

After he finished speaking, Shawn’s possibly-half-brother jerked to his feet and left the room, tension coiled around him like a- like a thing that coils. Like a python! Or was the squeezing one a boa constrictor?

While Shawn was busy sorting out his mental metaphor, the scientist guy shrugged at Doctor Barbie as if to say ‘What can you do? You know how he is.’ She rolled her eyes back, ‘Yeah, you’d think I’d be used to it by now.’ At least the shock hadn’t affected Shawn’s ability to translate non-verbal language.

A child’s shriek of mischievous glee echoed through the air vents, emerging faintly but perfectly audibly into the still air of the infirmary. Oh, hey. This meant he was an uncle.

That could maybe be cool. Or mildly terrifying. Or, you know, both.

****

\--JOHN--

He needed to get away, before he let something else slip. As it was, he knew McKay was going to bring up the ‘cheating father’ thing the next time he saw John, before segueing into a complaint about how John’s past was a closed book. Though he might hoard the information to eventually submit as evidence of how John’s ‘Kirk-like tendencies’ could be blamed on his genes even though that didn’t excuse them and how John should ‘use your big brain for once, Colonel!’ the next time that particular topic came up.

John suppressed the urge to punch the wall of the corridor as he stormed down it, mostly because he knew from experience that in a smackdown, cement beat fist every time. Unless you were Ronon.

Instead, he aimed himself in the general direction of the SGC’s gym in hopes that he’d find a sparring partner to take out his frustrations on. Ronon or Teyla would be best, but they were back on Atlantis. If he couldn’t find anyone to spar with that didn’t look like they’d break with the first love-tap, well, there was always the heavy bag.

Unfortunately, the only people in the gym were a couple of fragile-looking scientists running on the treadmills on the south side of the gym, and Atlantis’s own Major Drake Morris, who was beating the shit out of one of the heavy bags in the northeast corner of the gym.

Morris could no doubt hold his own against John, but the Major’s slim-boned build gave him the impression of being delicate. John knew there was no way he was delicate—the man was a Marine, after all—but John knew he’d end up holding back if he tried sparring with him, and that wasn’t what he needed right now.

Morris was the ridiculously pretty marine who had essentially become Lorne’s right-hand man back on Atlantis; Lorne did John’s paperwork, and Morris did Lorne’s, and John either played catch-up with old, and usually late, paperwork only he could do (or worked on the increasingly difficult math problems McKay kept emailing him, as a change of pace) or defended the city from the Wraith or the Asurans or the remnants of Michael’s experiments, not to mention the Genii and everyone else who’d decided to declare a fatwa on the Lanteans that week.

John didn’t really have anything against Morris, but he didn’t know him either; Morris had come to Atlantis during the five years John had been retired. He seemed to fit in well, since he’d been there for a little over three years now, and Lorne still swore that the man was worth his weight in refined naquadah—but still, the guy was a little off. Not in a bad way, just, well.

Morris was weird.

But then again, pretty much everyone who worked for the SGC (including the personnel stationed on Atlantis) were weird—it was practically a job requirement. Morris was just weird in a way John wasn’t personally very comfortable with.

It probably didn’t help that the guy was leading AR-1, now that John didn’t go into the field anymore for anything more dangerous than treaty-signing. Keeping himself out of danger was a damned exercise in frustration, but he wasn’t going to risk Jesse losing his only remaining parent.

Ok, so maybe he was jealous, just a little bit—or a whole fucking lot—that Morris had AR-1 and his old team and was friends with them, and that was why John couldn’t get comfortable around the guy.

He shoved it down and bottled it up, though, just like always, and didn’t give Morris the evil eye on his way across the gym to grab a pair of hand-wraps.

After taking as long as possible to wrap his hands and strip down to just his T-shirt and BDUs, minus boots, John took the bag next to Morris’s, because Morris hadn’t taken the hint and left already and because John was an adult, dammit.

Disliking Morris just because Morris was leading John’s team was the sort of childishness he’d been contemplating writing Keller up for less than a day ago. And contrary to what McKay thought, John didn’t like being childish. “Major,” he greeted Morris with a brief nod.

“Sir,” Morris grunted back in his weird accent, landing a nice jab on his swinging heavy bag before steadying it and snapping a salute off at John.

John waved him off and turned towards his own bag. He threw a few too-angry punches at it before he got a hold of himself and fell into a good rhythm. Morris’s soft grunts and the smack of his fists against the rubber bag were a soothing counterpoint to the sound of John’s own hits. After a few minutes, John found himself slipping into the zen-like state running or strenuous physical exertion always brought him—not including running or fighting for his life. He was crap at Teyla’s meditation, but this? This let him work shit out without going out of his mind with boredom or falling asleep.

So Patrick had cheated on John’s mother more than once. With more than one woman. Probably shouldn’t have come as much of a surprise to John as it had. What was the saying? ‘Tigers don’t change their stripes.’

John did the math in his head and gave the bag a couple vicious punches that hurt him more than they hurt it. According to John’s math, Patrick had knocked up Shawn’s mom a few months after John’s own mother was diagnosed with the breast cancer that had killed her a little less than two years later. John punched the heavy bag harder and its return swing nearly knocked him off his feet.

Fucking bastard. Way to be there for your dying wife, Dad.


	5. Chapter 5

\--SHAWN--

The rippling blue stuff that filled the giant stonish, metalish ring sparkled just like water—like it was some giant, weird-ass kiddie pool that had somehow been tipped on its side.

The fact that the ‘water’ wasn’t spilling out, wasn’t splashing through the metal grating leading up to the ring, was what brought it home to Shawn that this wasn’t all some whacked-out hallucination brought on by some really ill-advised pharmaceutical experimentation. Aliens and spaceships and phasers and transport beams didn’t faze him, but sideways pools of water set his world on its ear.

Shawn took a moment to admit that it was possible his world-view might be a little skewed, even if it was just to himself.

“So…” he trailed off, and glanced around Eliot—who was, annoyingly, acting like this was something he did every day—to catch Big Brother’s eye. “Let me get this straight. This fancy, sideways kiddie pool is going to magically teleport us to the giant spaceship in another galaxy that is the mythical flying city of Atlantis.”

“Pretty much,” John drawled at him, raising an eyebrow at Shawn. Without looking, John darted out a hand to grab Jesse by the back of his tiny TAC vest. John pulled him back to stand at John’s side when the kid tried to bee-line for the thing that looked like a BattleBot on steroids—towing a modified trailer of crates and boxes—making its way up the ramp towards the ‘gate. “You can play with the MALPs on Atlantis, Jesse,” Shawn heard John mutter under his breath to the kid.

Those two words were the longest sentence John had directed at Shawn since they’d found out about the whole half-brothers thing, and it’d been over two days since then. John had been avoiding everyone, fairly obviously, and Shawn certainly hadn’t been making any effort to seek him out.

After he’d found out, Shawn had spent most of that first day debating whether he should call Henry, or his mom, and demand an explanation. But, eventually, he decided that he didn’t want to open that can of worms. He could always use it as a conversation starter the next time he was stuck having dinner with the both of them. Thankfully, the whole ‘being in another galaxy’ thing meant he had a good excuse for not showing up to one of those for a while—or, at least, that the Air Force would make up a good excuse for him for not showing up to one of those for a while.

He actually kinda wanted to see Henry’s face when the Air Force trotted out its lame-duck excuse, but not enough to stick around. He fully expected, however, that the next time he visited the Milky Way, his mom was going to be on the SGC’s payroll.

No one could hide anything from her for very long, no matter how unbelievable it was or how good a person was at keeping secrets. Shawn had learned that lesson the hard way.

He paid just enough attention to the lecture Big Brother’s pet scientist had been spouting in Shawn’s general direction since he’d made the crack about the kiddie pool to catch the words “not wet” and “event horizon,” before he tuned him out again. One of the benefits of eidetic memory was that Shawn didn’t have to pay attention now to be able to remember something later. Of course, there was also the flip side of that—Shawn couldn’t ever forget anything, no matter how much he wanted to.

Which meant eidetic memory sucked way more than it rocked, some days.

But today was most definitely not one of those days.

Shawn watched in awe as the BattleBot and its trailer vanished into the ‘event horizon’ with a gloopy plop—a sound like how he imagined those slow-motion videos of a water drop hitting a puddle would sound like if they had sound.

A few groups of people straggled through the event horizon after the BattleBot. Their watery plops that sounded a little less gloopy—maybe the gloopy-ness of the plops had something to do with the masses of the objects? He’d ask someone later.

And then it was their turn.

As soon as John let go of Jesse’s tiny TAC vest, the kid ran at the ripply light with a gleeful yell and jumped into it, Big Brother following more sedately with his pet scientist beside him, who walked through mid-word, still waving his arms animatedly as he expounded on something.

Shawn stopped right before the event horizon, Eliot beside him, silent and watching him expressionlessly, though Shawn knew him well enough by now to catch the glint of humor in Eliot’s eyes. Shawn poked event horizon with a finger, just because he could, and because it made Eliot’s mouth twitch with a quick smile. His index finger came back out of the event horizon with a reluctant blopping sound, completely dry but with a faint pins and needles sensation in the part of the finger that’d been inside the wormhole.

There was nothing left to stop him, so he stepped forward. Shawn was couldn’t keep himself from holding his breath as he ducked his head and stepped through the event horizon of the wormhole to another galaxy, his eyes open wide and Eliot right beside him every step of the way.

****

\--ATLANTIS--

Her wiring momentarily sparked with joy and her cloak shivered and prismed, sending rainbows cascading through the city, as her prodigal son once more stepped foot on her superstructure. Her efficacy immediately rose by three percent. The sluggish despondency that had been plaguing her for the past 2361203.873651 seconds sloughed away as the loss of her favorite person was alleviated.

But then there was another, and then another! The bright sparks had come with her ColonelJohnSheppard through the Astria Porta—he’d brought her back progeny! A quick and gentle puff of air dislodged a few dead skin cells from the bright sparks on her sensors to be absorbed by her flooring: a brother! The son! Her favored one had brought his family to her! Oh, how she loved her ColonelJohnSheppard. She was glad he was returned to her.

When he’d left, she’d felt as broken as when her creators had abandoned her beneath the sea with only one faint life sign to sustain for 10,000 years. She loved her DoctorRadekZelenka and LieutenantColonelEvanLorne and DoctorMeredithRodneyMcKay, but she couldn’t speak with them. They were not linked with her as her chosen was, so as much as she adored them, she had had only the silence to speak to.

She had hoped that her ColonelJohnSheppard was not leaving her forever, and she had been right. He had returned. Returned to her, once again, and with his family. Her cloak prismed once again in ecstatic joy; he was home. They were home. The silence was once again filled with speech and thought, and she was not alone any longer.

****

\--ELIOT--

He followed Shawn through the puddle and stepped out on the other side like he’d just stepped through a door. Not that he’d expected—or wanted—to feel himself torn apart molecule by molecule and reassembled on the other side, but it felt wrong that it didn’t feel, well, wrong.

Keeping track of Shawn and staying at his side took up less than half his attention, and he took in his surroundings with the attention left to spare. It looked like they’d been thrown a ticker-tape parade, shining confetti whirling around them and confusing his eyes. A second later, Eliot realized the colors weren’t confetti but flashes of reflected sunlight. Almost as soon as he’d noticed it, the effect stopped.

The whole room looked bewildered. McKay was barking questions and orders into a radio and tapping at a touchpad computer, but no one looked worried or panicked, just confused.

“I take it that hasn’t happened before?” he asked John quietly, after herding Shawn over to where John was absentmindedly—stroking the wall? John shook his head and muttered something under his breath at the wall in a language Eliot didn’t know, but sounded a little like Spanish. Like, the distant third cousin twice removed of Spanish. More like Italian, come to think of it.

“She’s out and proud,” Shawn laughed, and Eliot turned to find Shawn leaning up against the wall with as much skin contact as possible, looking like he was trying to become a part of it; Jesse was hugging a column near the base of the stairs.

Eliot groaned. Of course this was genetic.

Great. Now he was going to be competing with a fucking building for Shawn’s attention. He almost would’ve preferred dealing with Shawn’s thing for Lassiter again.

****

\--JOHN--

There were still nights, even this many years later, where John woke up gasping with horror and choking on bile, the memory of Laura’s death still as vivid and gruesome as it had been the day he’d watched it happen right in front of him, helpless to stop it.

He shoved himself out of his no-longer child sized bed and stumbled to the en-suite bathroom to heave fruitlessly over the Ancient excuse for a toilet for the few minutes it took for his stomach to settle.

He had to admit, he thought to himself as his brain scrambled for something to focus on that wasn’t Laura’s prematurely haggard visage, it was pretty damn embarrassing to find out that the expedition had been camping out, for over five years, in what turned out to be the dormitory rooms of an Ancient boarding school for kids whose parents lived offworld.

What was worse was that no one had even realized it until Daniel Jackson had translated the relevant section of the database a few years ago on one of his now bi-annual pilgrimages—they’d just thought the Ancients had liked ridiculously small beds.

The apartment and condo complexes that Atlantis had highlighted for McKay and Lorne in the database, once she’d parsed the problem, had been in an unexplored but structurally sound tower near the South East pier. The Lanteans had gratefully moved, en masse, to the new living quarters as soon as they’d been declared safe.

John’s apartment had a bedroom with a grown-up-sized bed and an attached bathroom, a bedroom for Jesse (with another en-suite bathroom), an office, a kitchenette, a decent-sized living room (even largish, when Jesse’s toys and current projects-in-progress were put away) and a balcony with a view to die for (like all the other balconies in the city).

He headed for that balcony after he finished waking himself up by splashing his face with cold water—he wasn’t going to be sleeping anymore tonight anyway.

The ocean breeze was cold, but he didn’t go back inside or grab his coat on the way out, only wrapped his arms around himself and shivered in his threadbare T-shirt and worn pajama pants.

Their apartment was halfway up the spire and the balcony faced out to sea, so John could stand on the balcony on nights like tonight and look out through the delicate spires of Atlantis, which glowed faintly and surreally when the cloak was up, in a way that was really only noticeable at night. He could stare out over the ocean, into the depths of space, and see the individual glows of all the suns in Pegasus.

Suns around which planets orbited, many of them worlds John had actually set foot on, and a percentage of those were worlds whose peoples’ lives John had actually helped change for the better.

Nights like tonight, when he jerked awake from watching, again, Laura’s horror as the Wraith slammed his hand down onto her chest, the way her eyes always swung around to meet his, the despair filling them at her certain knowledge of her own imminent death, and how he relived, every fucking time, the helplessness of not being able to do a damn thing as that Wraith started draining her. And he relived, every single time, the agony of watching her struggle to lift her gun and put a bullet in her own head as a ‘fuck you’ to that goddamned Wraith. And every time, no matter how he tried, he couldn’t do a fucking thing to help her. Or to stop her.

Normally, John loved Atlantis, loved Pegasus in all its fucked-up glory, and loved his son with all his heart.

But on nights like tonight, staring up at the stars of Pegasus helped him to not regret ever coming here in the first place.

****

\--ATLANTIS--

She felt her ColonelJohnSheppard’s despair, and sped the molecules comprising the shield around his balcony, so the ocean breeze was warmed before it reached him. She did not have the arms required to give him a ‘hug’, so she nudged JesseJunaydSheppard awake and let him know his father needed him.

He agreed with a loving thought and a mental embrace for her before going to his father and wrapping his physical arms around him.

“Love you, Daddy,” her intercom picked up JesseJunaydSheppard mumbling into the leg he was wrapped around, and her favored son swung his child up into his arms and held on tight. She sent them both a mental caress and carefully edited the recording of a nearby security camera to erase the presence of the liquid sparkling on ColonelJohnSheppard’s cheeks, for she knew he would not appreciate it being remarked upon by the Lanteans tasked with viewing the security feeds.


End file.
